OXFORD, Maine -- Before a recent American-Canadian Tour race at Oxford Plains Speedway, Rollie LaChance started thinking outside the box.

The crew chief for Eddie MacDonald spent four hours on race morning throwing a radical set-up at the race car, one that included plenty of thrashing and banging during valuable practice time. Four hours later the car was on the track.

It took all of three laps before both driver and crew chief knew that something wasn't right.

"He asked how we were going, and I told him we were off," LaChance said this week, during a rare break from a world that includes a family with two children, a full-time job as a shop foreman and preparation of NASCAR Camping World East Series and Late Model cars. "I told him we'd have to take it out, and he said, 'I'll be right in to help.' We worked four hours for 45 seconds of track time, but we knew right off it wasn't going to work."

Similarly, it took them almost as long to know that, unlike that particular set-up, they were going to work just fine with one another. The team that LaChance and MacDonald have built around themselves is on the short list of favorites to win Sunday's 35th TD Banknorth 250 at Oxford.

"When racing is in your blood, (the 250) is something that you know about and you want," LaChance said. "Certainly the race has lost some of its luster. I remember when there was no Loudon, and growing up in Auburn, I remember the southern teams coming into town with their cars.

"There wasn't a Cup deal back then, and the '250' was far and away the biggest motorsports event in all of New England."

Both MacDonald, who won an ACT Late Model race at Oxford last summer, and LaChance say that the Oxford 250 remains one of their unaccomplished racing goals.

"We both really want to win this race," said MacDonald, who won a CWES race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last month under Lachance's guidance. "He's run it a lot more than I have, and I know he's had some fast cars in it, too. Our main goals were to win a race at Loudon and win the Oxford 250, and we're halfway there right now."

But MacDonald is from Rowley, Mass., while LaChance, 41, is from New Gloucester, just a stone's throw from Oxford. It's hard to imagine anybody could want to win the '250' as much as Lachance.

"I think it's probably more important to me than it is to him," Lachance said. "But it's important to him because it's so important to me.

"It's almost like a marriage. I don't care what level of racing you're in, the driver and crew chief, to be successful, is about having a partnership where you've got each other's backs. We want the best for each other."

THROUGH TOUGH TIMES

This partnership was tested early on.

Less than a year after Lachance came on board as MacDonald's crew chief in the East Series, financing for the team fell through in the winter before the 2006 season. They pieced together enough money to field their own part-time entry in the series, only to be suspended from NASCAR when they refused to tear their car down in a post-race inspection that summer at Loudon. By the start of 2007, they had sold off even more -- one car and one engine of which had gone to Robert Grimm at Grimm Racing.

Grimm asked the pair to run the car for him on a partial schedule, after they came out in their first 2007 race and won at Stafford (Conn.) Motor Speedway. This offseason, Grimm gave them more money than they'd ever had to work with as they were given the green light to tackle the entire 2008 East Series schedule.

It produced the win in Loudon in June, and solidified the relationship between the driver and crew chief.

"It's changed our whole thing having (LaChance)," MacDonald said. "Luckily we've been able to stay together. We've had some pretty tough times there, but we were really fortunate to keep things together.

"He just knows so much about the cars, every aspect of the car. You can't ask for a guy that puts more into it, either. He's got a full-time job and a family with two kids, but to be able to put the time in that he does is amazing."

LaChance believes two things helped them make it through the bleakest of times.

First, without money or prospects, they were forced to make choices that benefited the entire operation. Second, both men are hands-on when it comes to preparing race cars.

"I truly do enjoy working with him," LaChance said. "Sometimes I l'll come up with a really hair-brained idea (like that race at Oxford). Sometimes, he'll just look at me and say, 'Do you really want to?' and I'll say, 'Yep.' And then we'll do it.

"We've learned to make those choices together. If you're really going to make this work, you do what you have to do. A lot of times I'm going to the shop and Eddie is there to meet me at 3 o'clock in the morning. We've had quite a few cars set up between two and five in the morning."

LEARNING THE TRADE

In 1996, LaChance's first year as the lead crew chief for Tracy Gordon, he had his first and last best chance at winning Oxford's summer classic.

He and Gordon flew to Ontario, home of legendary car builder Junior Hanley, to work with Hanly for a week on building a winning car for Oxford. LaChance said he learned more that week about preparing to win than he ever had before.

"It was just the way Junior did everything, that I learned so much about the mindset you have to have going into a race like this," LaChance recalled. "He showmed me that there is a way you've got to go about things and a way you've got to think about the cars.

"He wouldn't take a single part out of the box without modifying it somehow, even if it was just taking aluminum rivets and replacing them with steel because the aluminum ones wouldn't last as long. He went over everything."

Gordon would lead more than half the race that year -- 130 laps -- before faulty wiring ended his night in devastating fashion.

LaChance and MacDonald worked long hours leading into this '250,' only in a different fashion. While they spent the early part of the month running Late Model races at Oxford and Lee USA Speedway, they've had to put in time on the East Series car this week as they ready for a race on Saturday in Nashville. They'll fly to Portland early Sunday morning to make it to Oxford in time for the race. The logistics of planning to have two cars in two different places has been difficult.

LaChance worries that he's not putting in the effort of someone who truly wants to win the Oxford 250, but he's reminded that his efforts are coming in a much different form. Instead of working on the car, he's working on getting to the race track in the face of nearly impossible scheduling.

On top of it all, their No. 17 car would surprise observers if it wasn't in position to win the '250.'

"You learn to take it in stride," LaChance said. "We focus so much on the Camping World car that it's not even funny. When we get to go up and run the Late Model, it's about going and having fun. Don't get me wrong -- I'm still going to do everything I can to try to win, but there's nowhere near the pressure of the Camping World Series.

"I know that Eddie can get the job done and he can get everything out of a race car that it has. I just have to get the car somewhere in the ballpark for him to have a shot."

Posted at 11:40 p.m. by TBarrett